Product Description

For artists who want more heart in their art, this title provides advice for boosting creativity and inspiration; detailed illustrations and examples; guidelines for connecting with viewers; and tips, tricks and techniques for painless painting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #476581 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-26
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Great for child and pet portraiture and ultra-realism
If your subject matter is pets, portraits and home scenes, Cindy Agan's "Painting Watercolors that Sparkle with Life" will be a valuable guide for how to render these subjects in transparent watercolor.

The book covers how to paint faces, especially children's faces in great detail, from sketching from photos to painting flesh tones. Pets are also discussed, from how to paint fur to making the most of a bad photo of a pet (the painter can get rid of those glowing night eyes that show up in flash photos of cats and dogs--the retinal lining of nocturnal animals flashes yellow or red and you as the painter can fix that!)

There is a section also on still life subjects of metal, glass and fabric and how to use masking. The demonstrations show the paintings in progress and you can see the author's sectional approach. She paints in detail section by section rather than over an entire area in layers of washes. By this I mean, the base of a crystal lamp would be painted in sectors from left to right rather than build up from the entire base with wash then darker detail. This is instructive.

One thing that is not dealt with; the tendency for paintings done from photographs (portraits) to look distorted or somehow odd. The camera does get a child or pet to stand still! That does help to get a good, realistic sketch, but I can always tell if a painting of a live subject is done from a photo. There is a sort of weird angle or other odd look to it that, as an artist, really bothers me. I can go into any gallery or look at someone's work and pretty much tell if a photo was used in studio. Not the least of which also is the rendering of the depth of field --the fuzziness of background subjects. While this is attractive in some paintings, again, you get a distorted look. If you like this look in your paintings, I'd say it's fine, go for it. But for me, I have to find ways to make photographs in studio look less "studio-ized." I use several photos to get a variation in the pose, as if the model were moving. If you don't sketch from life, at least some of the time, you will have this problem. This is the only issue I have with this book and for you, it may be no issue at all.

Great reference for the painter of realism and ultra-realism in water media.

Inspirational
I have the book and the video which I can thoroughly recommend, the author writes and paints from the heart. I look forward to her next book and hopefully a workshop here in the UK at some future date.